How to edit raw PCM audio data without an audio library?

Question

I\'m interested in precisely extracting portions of a PCM WAV file, down to the sample level. Most audio modules seem to rely on platform-specific audio libraries. I want

Answer 1

I've only written a PCM reader in C++ and Java, but the format itself is fairly simple. A decent description can be found here: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/422/projects/WaveFormat/

Past that you should be able to just read it in (binary file reading, http://www.johnny-lin.com/cdat_tips/tips_fileio/bin_array.html) and just deal with the resulting array. You may need to use some bit shifting to get the alignments correct (https://docs.python.org/reference/expressions.html#shifting-operations) but depending on how you read it in, you might not need to.

All of that said, I'd still lean towards David's approach.